Improve your school! in 1 hour or less! Design Thinking for Educators

Transcription

1 Improve your school! in 1 hour or less! Design Thinking for Educators The Design Thinking Quickstart Guide, made for teachers who want to create innovative solutions for classrooms, schools and communities.

2 How can I improve my school in just an hour? Well, truth is, Educator you are also a Designer. This little book will introduce you to a process that helps you be inspired to design new solutions for the challenges you face. Design Thinking is a process that is optimistic, collaborative, and creative. So, embrace your inner designer, step out of your comfort zone, and try Design Thinking on for size. You might just learn something new yourself! I draw on design process all of the time now in thinking about almost every system you can imagine, from how to archive student records to how to involve parents in our new student assessment strategies. Karen Fierst Learning Specialist New York, NY

3 First, you have to choose a design challenge. What s your wish for something you want to fix in your school? You may wish for a better way to teach a tough lesson or for a better way to collaborate with your peers. Maybe you have dreams of a library that better serves today s learner or want to consider a new way to use your classroom space to more deeply engage students in learning. Heck, maybe you even wish your day would be more balanced and wish that your school would design ways that teachers and students can be well. A new format for parent-teacher conferences that really engages parents. A new vision for the school day schedule. The opportunities are endless! HERE S A TIP: Think of a few things you may find yourself complaining about or wishing could be better. I WANT TO DESIGN A: CURRICULUM SPACE PROCESS OR TOOL SYSTEM

4 Already feeling nervous? Good! That excited energy will help you as you move through the 5 stages of the design process. DISCOVERY 1 I have a challenge. How do I approach it? INTERPRETATION 2 I learned something. How do I interpret it? Get curious! Make sense of it all!

5 BEFORE YOU BEGIN, TAKE A MOMENT TO MEDITATE ON THIS: Design Thinking is about believing we can make a difference, and having an intentional process in order to get to new, relevant solutions that create positive impact. Design Thinking gives you faith in your creative abilities and a process for transforming difficult challenges into opportunities for design. IDEATION 3 I see an opportunity. What do I create? EXPERIMENTATION 4 I have an idea. How do I build it? EVOLUTION 5 I tried something new. How do I evolve it? Generate new ideas! Make something! Keep it going!

6 Discovery 15 MINUTES DO THIS IN Get curious! If you want to create new and innovative solutions, you need to find a new way to get inspired beyond the things you already know. Dare to go out of your comfort zone and explore A good designer is always looking to be surprised, finding inspiration through asking great questions or seeing the world with beginner s eyes. There are many ways you can get inspired. Here are a few ideas for you Immerse yourself in the context of the person you are designing for. Designing for a student? Sit in their chair! Designing for other teachers? Sit in their classrooms! Visit a totally unexpected place. Designing a new library? Visit a hip retail store! Designing a new approach to teaching fractions? Visit a pizza parlor! Ask someone about their life. Are you designing a new way to engage students in learning foreign languages? Ask them about what they love to do over the weekend it will give you ideas for how to engage them! Designing an approach to professional development for your school? Ask another adult about the last time they really enjoyed learning something!

7 A team fr om Rive rdale Co S c h o ol w untr y as desig ning new for their ways teachers to collab They visi ora te settings d a number of an te. alogous a fire sta corpora te office tion, a, and a de studio sign to inspir e new so for their lutio ch inspired allenge. They we ns by re so dynamic some of the me eting s in the c orporati decided on to use th em in the, they ir schoo l. ry went hool libra by the gning a sc si ed ir de sp re in was A team team store and he le T. pp ce A e en ri to th ierge expe ice experience nc co re in-sto a serv. designing t they saw ended up ired by wha sp in ly ct dire DISCOVERY Phase 1 FOR MORE DETAIL, SEE THE METHODS LISTED IN THE TOOLKIT: Discovery 1-1 Understand the Challenge 1-2 Prepare Research WHERE YOU ARE IN THE PROCESS 1-3 Gather Inspiration WHAT S IN THIS PHASE 1-1 Understand the Challenge 1-2 Prepare Research 1-3 Gather Inspiration

8 INTERPRETATION WHERE YOU ARE IN THE PROCESS WHAT S IN THIS PHASE 2-1 Tell Stories Search for meaning Frame Opportunities 46 Interpretation Make sense of it all! 10 MINUTES DO THIS IN A team of educators from the Howard County School District exploring the question of creating a 21st century learning experience for their students capture patterns they found after meeting with youth, parents, and teachers. Phase 2 Interpretation FOR MORE DETAIL, SEE THE METHODS LISTED IN THE TOOLKIT: 2-1 Tell Stories 2-2 Search for Meaning 2-3 Frame Opportunities

9 Your job as a designer is to see the forest through the trees. Interpretation is the art of making sense of what we ve seen and heard during the observations. It s a process that takes us from scattered observations to meaningful insights. During this step, you reflect on what you discovered and see it from a totally, completely, new perspective. What are 3 interesting patterns or themes that the people you talked to or the place you visited inspired for you? List them as opportunities for design. Not answers, mind you... That will come in the next step. A design opportunity gives you a moment to think about what you hadn t noticed before... And is most helpful when you turn those insights into an opportunity. We like to do that as statements beginning with How might we, or What if Let s say, for instance, that you are redesigning the space of your classroom and you chatted with some students who made you realize that they re wishing for a mix of comfort and structure in the classroom. You could say, How might we create our classroom to integrate comfort and structure? A team of educators from the Blue Valley Center for Advanced Professional Studies (CAPS) was tasked with publicizing the programs in their newly-built building. Through interpreting their observations they discovered the simple (but powerful) insight that parents were the gatekeepers of students time. By shifting marketing materials to focus on parents versus students, they caused program enrollment to skyrocket.

10 IDEATION WHERE YOU ARE IN THE PROCESS WHAT S IN THIS PHASE 3-1 Generate Ideas Refine Ideas 54 Ideation 10 MINUTES DO THIS IN Generate new ideas! This is the part you ve been waiting for Brainstorming! Sometimes it takes a lot of not-yet-great ideas, to find the ideas that really feel innovative. Sometimes it takes combining multiple ideas to find the solution that feels best. Brainstorming is a unique Design Thinking method in that there are actual rules, and yes, you must follow them! Trust us, this will help push you to generate out-of-box solutions and get your creative juices flowing. Phase 3 Ideation FOR MORE DETAIL, SEE THE METHODS LISTED IN THE TOOLKIT: 3-1 Generate Ideas 3-2 Refine Ideas

11 TIP Find at least 2-3 people to join your brainstorm. The more heads in the game, the more ideas you ll come up with! BRAINSTORM RULES DEFER JUDGMENT. There are no bad ideas at this point. There will be plenty of time to narrow them down later. ENCOURAGE WILD IDEAS. Even if an idea doesn t seem realistic, it may spark a great idea for someone else. BUILD ON THE IDEAS OF OTHERS. Think and rather than but. STAY FOCUSED ON TOPIC. To get more out of your session, keep your brainstorm question in sight. ONE CONVERSATION AT A TIME. All ideas need to be heard, so that they may be built upon. BE VISUAL. Draw your ideas, as opposed to just writing them down. Stick figures and simple sketches can say more than many words. GO FOR QUANTITY. Set an outrageous goal then surpass it. The best way to find one good idea is to come up with lots of ideas.

12 EXPERIMENTATION Experimentation Make 15 MINUTES DO THIS IN something! If you build it, you will learn. Prototypes allow you to share your idea with other people and figure out what s working and what s not working about your concept. It can sometimes feel daunting to bring an idea to life, but we assure you, you can do a lot with paper, scissors, and imagination. The important thing is to make your idea tangible. Don t worry about getting it right the first time, just get started. The best prototypes change significantly over time. You ll be amazed at how much you can learn about your idea just in the process of building it out. Phase 4 Experimentation FOR MORE DETAIL, SEE THE METHODS LISTED IN THE TOOLKIT: 4-1 Make Prototypes 4-2 Get Feedback WHERE YOU ARE IN THE PROCESS WHAT S IN THIS PHASE 4-1 Make Prototypes Get Feedback 60

13 IN T E R A A team o f teache rs nation w ere rede from schools a cross th sig the need e s of toda ning the schoo l library y s ee wha for t a library s student. They wa if it was experien bu ce would nted to talking to ilt more like a tr ee-hous feel like architec e. Before tested it ts about out in a rapid an the idea, they d rough manner. C T IO N Prototypes come in all shapes, sizes, and forms. Challenge yourself to try prototyping a form you don t usually work with. You might surprise yourself with how much fun you have with this new working style! DIAGRAM MODEL RO LE PL AY MOCK-UP

14 Evolution Keep it going! 5 MINUTES DO THIS IN Phew, by now you ve attempted to change your school for the better. How did it go? What was it like to go outside your comfort zone or your classroom to look for inspiration? Evolution is all about reflecting on what you ve done, what you learned and how you d do it differently next time, and then perhaps, most importantly what you want to do next. So, what do you want to do next? A group of community volunteers and educators at Design Thinking Hawaii, wanted feedback on their design challenge the Castle Complex Redesign Initiative. In order to assess community interest, get feedback, and test the resonance of their current ideas, the team held an outreach session at the local Windward Mall.

15 For a deeper dive into Design Thinking and step-by-step worksheets to guide you through your next design challenge, download the (free!) Design Thinking for Educators Toolkit and Designer s Workbook. We want to hear about what you re working on! Send us stories about what you ve been designing. [email protected]

16 Design Thinking for Educators BROUGHT TO YOU BY Riverdale